Carolyn
Waudby
Sheffield
Sand's End
The tide has withdrawn;
we pick a path
across watery shales, rocks draped in widow's weeds
and hanging ropes of mussels glistening.
We are headed for the bay's end - the crescent's tip,
the place
of plenty
where fish respond to the lure.
I am pulled towards the
shrinking sea.
He slides in my wake, balancing
as we stride over cavities, their still pools windows
to something deep.
I have to see it - that blurry curve
where worlds collide, where ships
could easily slip.
Aleksandar
Pavić
Novi Sad, Serbia
Haiku from 'A
Scarecrow in the Snow'
pulling off her scarf
a little gipsy girl
bursts into song
spring night -
asleep in the shelter
a girl and her doll
covered in snowflakes
even the scarecrow
looks attractive
Rebecca
Nesvet
New York
The Potter's
Liturgy
The mould that moulded
man was made of clay,
a fine wet clay, scooped up and shaped and split
into hemispheres: two caves. One day
lost forces pushed the two halves shut, and knit
the cross-hatched edge with water tinged with earth;
and darkness, trapped inside, began to boil
until the sphere exploded, giving birth
to fragments of a spiral form. The coil
of human journeying unwound, and fell.
It's falling still. Man falls through slow-baked time
for clay is slippery, and there's no hell
nor paradise, just gravel, grit, sand, and lime
and glaze. Man holds his strange shape fairly well,
but cracks can form, and leave you with the shards
of worlds, of selves, of clay, that time discards.
Don
Ammons
Odense, Denmark
Florida
Hot! The sun is noon
high. The beach is
granular quartz, squeaks underfoot as I run
up from a sluggish surf. I find skimpish shade
under a palm tree, sit, lean back against
its grey trunk. I am eleven years old.
Behind me is a small island of palm,
pine, and scrub palmetto. Beyond my
beached pram, its small sail collapsed,
the Gulf of Mexico is on fire, flashing white
flames from a million molten, spinning spangles.
The brilliance hurts my eyes. I look down,
smile, cover my feet with sand, wiggle them free.
I bend forward, scrape roads, make a square fort
surrounded by a dry moat, lean back against
the palm, close my eyes, sink, drift, but know,
even then, as I doze, that I am happy,
and will never be as happy again.
Hot! The sun is noon high. The beach is...
[Note: a "pram" is a small
flat-bottomed boat of Dutch origin]
Robin
Brumby
Taunton, Somerset
Inventive schoolgirls
transcribing haiku
on mobile 'phones
Patrick
Osada
Windsor
Poetry Matters
Old slipper wearing pessimist
Had mentioned, when he wrote of Yeats:
'Poetry makes nothing happen...'
And in the greater scheme of things
He's right... No poem ever stilled
The guns, prevented war, or stopped a fight.
But poems work as epitaphs;
Become the pillows for our dreams,
Gather us up when times are rough:
Provide a comfort, soothe our needs.
Poems can conjure life or death,
Daffodils or a thrush in spring;
Poems have room for all mankind -
From beauty to the kitchen sink;
Whether in free verse or in rhyme,
The good ones make you think.
['In Memory of W. B. Yeats' W.H. Auden
famously wrote: 'Poetry makes nothing happen...']